.ASSIGNMENT
TEACHING COMPETENCIES
Submitted to ,
Lissy George
MTTC PTPM
Submitted by,
Sajitha S M
MTTC PTPM
INTRODUCTION
There currently is an abundant knowledge-base to inform us that in schools teachers play the critical role in student learning and achievement. Research reveals that how teachers instruct and these interactions with students is the cornerstone around which to build effective schools. A summary of the available studies accumulated over the past 40 years on a key education driver, teacher competencies offers practical strategies, practices, and rules to guide teachers in ways to improve instruction that improves student performance and the quality of the work experience. Four groupings of these competencies can help organize and simply for teachers what they need to master to maximize their performance: classroom management, instructional delivery, formative assessment, and personal competencies. These four categories also provide the essential core around which decision makers can construct teacher preparation, teacher hiring, teacher development, and teacher and school evaluations.
TEACHER COMPETENCE
Before addressing the meaning of teacher competence, we must first establish the meaning of competence. Competency is a term used extensively by different people in different contexts; hence, it is defined in different ways. Teacher education and job performance are two contexts in which this term is used. Competencies are the requirements of a “competency-based” teacher education and include the knowledge, skills and values a teacher-trainee must demonstrate for successful completion of a teacher education programme. Some characteristics of a competency are as follows:
1. A competency consists of one or more skills whose mastery would enable the attainment of the competency.
2. A competency is linked to all three of the domains under which performance can be assessed: knowledge, skills and attitude.
3. Possessing a performance dimension, competencies are observable and demonstrable.
4. Since competencies are observable, they are also measurable.It is possible to assess a competency from a teacher’s performance.
Teaching competencies may require equal amounts of knowledge, skill and attitude, but some will not. Some competencies may involve more knowledge than skill or attitude, whereas, some competencies may be more skill or performance based.Some scholars see "competence" as a combination of knowledge, skills and behavior used to improve performance, or as the state or quality of being adequately qualified and capable of performing a given role. The Occupational Competency movement initiated by David McClelland in the 1960s sought to move away from traditional attempts to describe competency in terms of knowledge, skills and attitudes and to focus instead on those specific values, traits, and motivations (i.e. relatively enduring characteristics of people) that are found to consistently distinguish outstanding from typical performance in a given job or role. The term "competence" first appeared in an article authored by Craig C. Lundberg in 1970 (cited in 2) titled "Planning the Executive Development Program", and then in David McClelland’s seminal 1973 treatise entitled, "Testing for Competence Rather than for Intelligence" (cited in 2). The term has since been popularized by Richard Boyatzis and many others.
A competency is more than just knowledge and skills; it involves the ability to meet complex demands by drawing on and mobilizing psychosocial resources (including skills and attitudes) in a particular context. Competency is essential to an educator’s pursuit of excellence.Teachers need a wide range of competencies in order to face the complex challenges of today’s world. Teaching competency is an inherent element of an effective training process, one that aspires to contribute to the welfare of a particular country or the world, itself. The central figures in the educational process are teachers. The success of training and education depends on their preparation, erudition and performance quality.The teaching skills and life-long learning competencies of professional teachers comprise the following:to perform complex pedagogical duties;to be well-spoken, in good mental and physical health, stable and tolerant;to have a propensity to work with the younger generation, good communicative and observational skills, tact, a vivid imagination, and leadership (Shmelev, 2002).During their professional careers, teachers pass through the following levels of professional growth to achieve the acme of professional competency.
1st level: pedagogical ability – characterized by detailed knowledge of the subject;
2nd level: pedagogical skill – perfected teaching skill;
3rd level: pedagogical creativity – marked by implementation of new methods and techniques into educational activities;
4th level: pedagogical innovation – distinguished by the incorporation of essentially new, progressive theoretical ideas, principles and methods of training and education (Buharkova, Gorshkova, 2007).
Schools of education have acknowledged the urgency to develop culturally competent teachers. Pedagogical culture is, therefore, an integral part of a competent teacher. Pedagogical culture consists of three components:an axiological component, meaning teacher acceptance of the values of pedagogical work;a technological component, which facilitates solving different pedagogical tasks;a heuristic component, which entails setting goals, planning, analyzing and self-critiquing; this is the creative part of pedagogical activity (Ivanitsky, 1998).
The National Council of Teacher Education has Identified ten teacher competencies for making the teachers professionally content. These are discussed below in brief:
(1) Contextual Competencies
The teachers’ job is an integral part of the total educational system and also of the total social and cultural systems in which they have to operate. They must be fully familiar with the education systems at the National and State levels as well as with their global and local ramifications. For this teacher should have the ability to understand various context such as historical background, present status of socio- economic, cultural, linguistic and religious context of the family and the community profile. They will also have to understand various other issues like developmental activities, urbanisation, unemployment, value inculcation, political dynamics, the growing impact of scientific and technological development etc.A commerce teacher should understand the various Impacts of commerce in the national development, importance of commerce education for a business culture in society, collect details of technological developments in commerce and understand the role of a commerce teacher in the world of businesss.
(2) Conceptual Competencies
It includes developing right perspective on education to receive new experiences meaningfully and understand the meaning of education and learning and the impact of socio-economic and socio-cultural factors on them.
Conceptual Competencies identified includes:
• Clarity of thought, deep understanding of educational theories and thorough knowledge of various educational trends, pedagogical methods, techniques etc.
• They should know significant characteristics of child development at different stages to enable them to transact curriculum effectively.
• They should have knowledge of classroom organization and management too which would help them in organizing curricular and co-curricular activities quite effectively in and outside classroom.
• Concepts and educational implications of globalization, modernization, liberalization and privatization have to be understood by teachers.
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(3) Content Related Competencies
• Full mastery over the content of the subject that they have to teach.
• Meaning fully attain all the relevant concepts involved in commerce at meta cognitive level.
• They should identify such areas from the curriculum where there is enough scope for joyful activities, individual and group learning etc.
• Process oriented analysis and mastering over the curriculum is needed
(4) Transactional Competencies
It refers to the skill of day to day teaching to achieve educational objectives effectively through meaningful interaction between teachers and pupils and the environment by using different methods, activities and technology in an integrated and effective manner. It includes the ability to:
• To analyse and understand the nature and mental process of the learners.
• To organize verity of activities such as storytelling, singing, games, field visits, celebration of national, social and cultural events to make teaching learning process joyful, participatory and relevant.
• To prepare appropriate teaching aids and other teaching learning material to support and enhance the effectiveness of teaching-learning process.
• To integrate continuous evaluation while transacting subject content.
• To use continuous evaluation approaches to diagnose weakness and strengths of the teaching learning strategy.
• To identify the weaker and, brighter children in order to adopt remedial measures and undertake enrichment programmers.
(5) Competencies related to co-curricular activities
Co-curricular activities like debates, quiz competition, commerce club, sports, games etc., provide ample scope for incidental learning. The curricular activities are expected to promote cognitive development emotional maturity and psycho motor skills of children.So here the competencies required by a teacher are
• Ability to organize curricular and co-curricular activities for achieving educational objectives.
• Ability to organize social and cultural activities like morning assembly, days celebration etc.
• Motivate students to actively participate in various co-curricular activities
• Use co-curricular activities for developing and reinforcing the related subject knowledge.
(6) Competencies to Develop and use instructional Material
Availability of instructional materials helps the teacher in organising the learning situations effectively. A teacher is expected to be competent enough to select and use the available instructional material and also to prepare them as per the requirements.It includes:
• Ability to develop interesting teaching aids for making teaching learning process easy, interesting and activity based.
• Ability to develop textual and self-learning material for children as per their age and nature.
• Ability to adopt the teaching learning materials to meet the educational needs of children with special needs including children from disadvantaged groups and working children.
• Knowledge as how to develop work-books and activity books.
• Ability to use electronic gadgets like Computers, CDs etc. to make teaching learning process more effective and interesting.
(7) Evaluation Competencies
It involves the process of the qualitative value judgement of pupil performance on the basis of anticipated goals. Hence a teacher is expected to know different techniques and tools of evaluation for diagnostic and prognostic purposes. This includes:
• Teachers should be able to carry out continuous evaluation in a systematic and formal manner.
• Ability to maintain observation records to evaluate likes and dislikes habits, value and attitudes of the children.
• Ability to diagnose the problem that children face in comprehending what is taught.
• Ability to undertake action research.
• Ability to analyse and interpret test data and make reliable value judgement for various purposes.
(8) Management Competencies
It involves the skill of the teacher to achieve high quality educational objectives in minimum time, energy and money through appropriate and effective use of educational aids and active participation of available human resources. Every teacher is a manager of a particular class or group of students.
• Teacher should have the skill of classroom management including total teaching as well as subject teaching in the class.
• Management of daily work and activities.
• Identification and allocation of various available resources for organising different school activities and programmes .
• Communication of the needs, problems and possible solutions related to teaching, learning, discipline, human relations etc to parents, principal, administrators society etc.
• Preparation of appropriate yearly, monthly, daily plans of instruction.
• Judiciously using available school time in accordance with different tasks
(9) Competencies Related to Working with Parents
It is the ability of a teacher to get the co-operation of parents, and their involvement for achieving the objective. It is required for the useful mobilisation of variety of infrastructural and academic resources. Teachers have a significant role in organising and managing proper parent teacher associations . For this teachers should :
• Arrange different programmes like home visits, social gatherings etc.
• Collect information about family background of pupils with a view to understand familial conditions affecting education
• Help parents to inform about the needs, strengths and weakness and progress of their children.
• Procure cooperation of parents in planning and executing various curricular and co curricular activities.
• Discuss and suggest some workable solutions to overcome the problems their children.
(10) Competencies Related to Working with Community and Other Agencies
To improve the standard of education in schools, teacher needs to seek co-operation and support of members of the community as well. Teacher must have the ability to work towards bringing school and the community as close as possible and inter-related. Teacher must be able to understand the role of the community in the development of the school and community at large can contribute to regular and effective functioning of the school and its continuous growth,
Thus, the above mentioned competencies are significant and need to be developed among teacher to make them professionally competent. It will help to improve quality of education.
CONCLUSION
Teachers need to improve knowledge and skills to enhance, improve and explore their teaching practices. Many of the studies on competencies of teachers focus on the teaching role of teachers in the classroom rather than teachers’ competencies. Teachers’ competencies have been broadening with respect to reform studies in education, development of teacher education, scientific results of educational science and other fields. Kress pointed out that “the previous era had required an education for stability, the coming era requires an education for instability” (133). Kress’ ideas can explain why teachers’ professional development should be redefined for sustainability. The aims of education change very quickly depending on the demands of the era requiring more capability. These demands directly affect educational system. Teachers are responsible for operating educational system and they need strong and efficient professional competencies.
